


It's all a big Joke

by AnnaCipactli12



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Joker (2019)
Genre: Angst, Existentialism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 10:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20946761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaCipactli12/pseuds/AnnaCipactli12
Summary: It's all a big Joke. Don't you get it? We are all part of it and only two know, but out of the two, I am the only one who's man enough to live freely, without a care of anyone or anything since nothing really matters. My only regret is that I can't make Bats see the truth. (Series of one-shots. Ties with Joker, DCEU and other Batman tie-ins)





	1. Chapter 1

My name does not matter because I do not know who I really am. When I see the stars, I just see specs of dust. Brighter dust, like glitter in a sea of nothingness. That is how it feels to be me.

You might be asking why should you give a crap about someone who never belonged, who didn’t work hard enough to belong. The joke is on you there because I am you. I am the thing that festers in your heart, waiting to eat you whole until there is nothing left but me. Good old me. My name is chaos.

Kill me now. Another one will take my place. No primal force of nature is ever really gone. We just stay dormant until our avatar arrives, letting us reunite with our eternal friend, the darkness.

Light and dark, friends and rivals, never enemies like us, sordid old pals.

The Darkness can deny it all he wants, he is just like me. The only difference is that he lies to himself and others. Once, he wasn’t so keen to convince others that he was good; now stuck in the madhouse that is real life, he does.

Ever since the bat can remember he’s been a loner. Even when his parents were alive, he had no one but himself. He can lie to himself all he likes. ‘I have Alfred. If my parents had lived, I would have grown up to be a stable, less fucked up, stand up guy.’ Blah, blah, blah. Excuses, excuses.

He cannot fool me. He cannot fool us. That’s right. It’s you and me. It’s all of us. Ever heard your mommy tell you ‘play with your toys?’ The world is your playground. Let’s play together. Our clown family is growing and it will keep up growing until the whole universe becomes our playground.

... Even so … Life is so boring if the bat is not there.

Why so serious little boy? Deep down, Bats you are still a little boy. A little boy stuck in an adult man’s body, doing big boy’s stuff but you’re just like me. You just have fancier toys and willing playmates.

It’s okay Bruce –if you still insist the world know you by that name. I know your true self. We were born on the same day, you and I, and just as the good old days when there was nothing but you and me, we are destined to do this **forever.**

But don't worry. This vainglorious smile on my face is shared by my newest creation. My consort, my queen, the itch on my crotch, Harley Quin. What an amusing pet she turned out to be but more than a good lay in the hay, she is my eternal partner in crime. I am her pudding and like any good dessert more addictive than cocaine, she is bound to me. She will get angry with me from time to time, threaten with cut ties but eventually, she'll realize that she's nothing without me.

Ha, ha, ha ... The first time that we met, she was a thirty two fresh out of graduate school psychiatrist who was eager to prove to the world that she could take on any challenge. I opened up to her and she opened up to me. It wasn't hard. She was an open book, eager to be read and loved (like I once was). Harleen Quinzel. I joked about how it was so similar to a Harlequin. Here she was hoping that I wasn't one of many who made that joke but the joke's on her because I did and to my amusement, she laughed at me.

"You're not funny, Mr. Fleck. You're just another patient who thinks he can beat the system because he's had a bad life. We all have gone through struggles, none of us snapped like you did."

_Oh but you will my sweet. _And sure enough, in less than two years, she did.

All it takes is one bad day and for her it was her whole fucking family and her workplace filled with envious thugs who cared nothing for her. One narcissistic mother. No different than mine but hers was worse. And I don't say that lightly. Her was really worse because the way she manipulated and almost killed her was done in such a subtle way that it's almost diabolical. And her father, an indolent SOB who let himself get manipulated by that bitch so he could take out his frustrations on his daughter, the girl he claimed was his pride and joy.

Harleen joined the national guard. She really thought she could do it all. She disclosed to me how she had gone from fat to thin and then fat to less fat to super thin to fat, thus perpetuating the never ending cycle of eating disorder and weight gain/loss that plagues so many women. But unlike those women, she had no one to turn to except a clown who saw her for who she really was and not who she tried to be to please others.

Those people, the arbiters of moral truth. The hypocrites that came from all sides, told her to rely on different things. None of them ever helped her. They were much at fault as I was. Now they get what they fucking deserve.

And yet ... I can't drop the matter of Bats. And she knows it. She's come to terms with it. We are brothers after all. Blood unites us. The blood of the awful and the corrupt that gave birth to this universe's worst nightmares: us. The Joker and Batman, locked forever in this insane asylum ...


	2. Queen or Harlequin?

There is no way to see beyond the veil of the translucent. The horrors that lie beneath this pile of flesh you call a body are nothing but a mirage of my former self. The truth that can be seen in my eyes are who I really am and every time I look into them and see my reflection starting back at me, I scream. Or at least I think I do.

I hate everything there is to be known or said about me for that is what I am after all, am I not? I am a perception. We are all walking, talking mirrors of what others see in us. Regardless of what we tell ourselves when we wake up in the morning, ready to go about our daily lives before we receive our daily dose of reality, we aren’t free to choose. The person you see in this mirror, is not the person you chose to be. You can claim that your choice to please others is your choice but you are just lying to yourself. Those who virtue signal and tell you that you have it in you to be the best that you can be, are only saying that so they can trick you. Just like the religious bat-shit crazies out there, it’s a sales pitch so you can later be committed to their social cause. Nobody ever wants to see the real you. If that were true, you’d be happy and happy people are no good for a society that lives off leeching on others.

What I saw in Mr. J was something else nobody else could see. I knew of Wayne. My parents hated them but in a sick twisted way also idolized them. ‘Be like them Harleen. Be a winner.’ My father was a pig who had been an Adonis in his youth. My mother a harridan who had nothing going for her except her self-pity. Couple that with her psychological manipulation and you have a bitch who hooks up a chad like dad.

Joker was wise to the ways of the world. He fucks up with everyone’s minds. He fucked up with mind. I was his special pet project. A curiosity that became an obsession, an obsession that morphed into something sicker that became too toxic for us to hold on.

I didn’t want to cut the cord. I envisioned a world where it was just me and him. But that world was a lie as was our love.

“Think you can go on without him?” Ivy asks me sarcastically.

“No, but the longer I try, the more I know that at least tried. And ain’t that better than nothin’ sugar puffs?”

Ivy rolls her eyes. She makes a bet with another one of the inmates in Arkham. “Give her two months time from now and she’ll go back to being his queen.” She chuckles, turning her back on me and then Edward Nigma aka the Riddler.

“Riddle me this, riddle me that, how will our favorite harlequin prove this plant gal wrong?”

“Do not talk to me in that demeaning manner, Nigma. This is not the 1950s. Zip it, lest you’re going to say something clever.”

“Do not be such a Debbie Downer. I am on your side here. Nobody wants to see the most happy sad like a pagliachi clown.”

“Leave the jokes to her and her abusive boyfriend, Nigma. That’s what he will always be.” Is the last thing Ivy says before leaving the recreation room. Two weeks later, Mr. J’s goons come to bail me out. Instead of finding him in the club, waiting for me in his favorite room, surrounded by knives and rusted bullets, there’s nothing but a painting I did of him years back, torn in two.

“With love, your heart from the top, hats off to the queen of comedy who dances to the tune of her master, your Mr. J.” I read aloud.

I scream. How dare he abandon me?!

Nothing makes sense. It’s a big fat joke. That is all I am to him. A joke.

I will show him. I am not someone to make fun of. I have been at the mercy of men like him for far too long.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I spit, disgusted at the girly bubbly face that stares back at me. Enough is enough.

I am sick of this clown business.


	3. Killing the past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This and the previous chapters are a tie in to the current DCEU.

Sophie Dumond was the closest thing Arthur had to a girlfriend. After he had gone on a killing spree, she and her daughter left Gotham and moved to NYC. When things got too rough there, they moved to Metropolis. With the arrival of Superman, came hope.

Sophie’s daughter was a young woman by the time the new caped crusader was proclaimed the savior of mankind. He said he belonged to a dying race. His parents had sent to Earth, not just to save him, but to protect them and lead them into a brighter future.

_He called himself a leader, not a protector._

_Why does it sounds so familiar?_

Sophie’s hope was replaced by familiar dread after she saw cults of Superman sprung all over the world. Too much power for one man. Her daughter thought the same. To make matters worse, his deification brought the dark knight out of retirement.

Superman wasn’t a savior, he was a magnet for the worst of the worst and now with Batman and these new supes thrown into the mix, it wouldn’t be long before the prince of crime came into the scene again.

-0-

Long and behold, I was right. He was different. Thinner, crazier looking; he lacked any of the defining facial features that gave a hint that he had once been human.

It was as if those batch of chemicals had erased the last trace of Arthur Fleck.

-0-

Behind every great man, there’s an even greater woman. That truth was self-evident in the Joker. One good look at the prince of crime and you could tell he was a man with a plan, the means and a faithful servant who’ll do anything for him.

There is a sick co-dependency in that girl that makes me feel sorry for her. Whatever sob story Arthur Fleck gave her, she swallowed it.

Poor girl. She has no idea what type of mad fellow she’s with. He’ll abandon her at the first chance he gets. Batman may have thought that throwing him in that batch of chemicals would be the end of him but it only made him stronger. Yet for all those changes, he's still the pathetic loner he was decades ago. 

_If you hadn't been thrown there, would you be the silly fool I am now? Would you be sickly instead of that inhuman bastard terrorizing innocents?_

Her daughter was an intelligence officer working for the CIA and as an informant to Amanda Waller. She was careful not to disclose any information to Amanda and her friends in government to avoid being on the spotlight and drawing unwanted attention from that nutjob. Sophie grabbed the control and put on the program she had DVR'd in the morning before she went to work at Metro Credit Union. Tellers had to be friendly yet ready to take on difficult customers. To avoid more stress in our workplace, the head of the bank had told them to avoid the news. "Sports, movies, and everything else that disconnects the people from the real world." He said. If they were to hear the news, they had to come from business channels.

The way things were going, it felt less and less like she was living in somewhere else that wasn't Gotham. The whole world was getting crazier. Everywhere she turned, she was reminded of it.

The broadcast she missed didn't reveal much of what she already knew, except for one of the Joker's former clubs being raided by the FBI and Gotham PD. Nothing was left except for a hand drawn picture with a knife stuck in his eye. _Who did you anger this time? _

Whoever he did, wasn't going to get to see justice being done. The Joker always got scotch free. That's why he was crime royalty, a legend among criminals.

-0-

Sophie came home late again. She had to cancel dinner with her daughter again. Her new boss was a real dickhead who watched them like a hawk. Luckily, the asshole was too busy sneezing to notice her texting her daughter how bad she felt for standing her daughter up again.

As usual, her daughter was a good sport and didn't make a fuzz about it. 

She sighed, locking her apartment door then turning to the empty living room. This was an upgrade from the roach infested apartment from Cassidy's childhood. Metropolis had better living quarter than Gotham, but not by much. 

She sat down in the couch. Her daughter must be worried sick so she got her cell out and texted her she got home safe and was okay. She didn't wait for her daughter's response. It was late so if there was any response, Sophie would probably not see it until tomorrow morning.

Still, she was not too tired to go to bed so she turned the TV on. Cable news were becoming more tabloid-like. Instead of reporting the news, they focused on the latest celebrity gossip or super hero victory.   
So engrossed in the sensationalism that she didn't notice the note on her coffee table until it was too late. 


End file.
